A Content Marketing Strategy Founded on Quality!

A Content Marketing Strategy Founded on Quality!

Useful, up to date content is one of the most powerful ingredients of a good website and should be at the very heart of any content marketing strategy. Much has been written, both by us and by countless others about the value of content marketing as it gives you the power to engage with your audience round the clock, it lets new customers find you and get to know you before you even speak to them and through sharing and social media it can allow word of mouth to spread like wildfire.

However, there is no point in churning out content for the sake of it. While posting a huge bulk of content on a regular basis may help you be found by search engine users in the short term, in the long term it won’t win you any fans if the quality is low. In addition, search engines will soon realise that readers aren’t staying on your page for long enough to prove your content is useful and will penalise you by dropping you down the rankings.

So how do you ensure that the content you post is always top quality? Take a look at these quality content marketing tips:

Do you add value to your topic?

Before starting any content piece, whether it’s video, blog, infographic or anything else, make sure that it is a subject that will be interesting to your readers. Make sure that the topic or subject matter is in line with what you usually deliver, that it adds something thought provoking or helpful and that there is information that you can provide that is worth sharing. Check similar topics from other blogs and websites and compare your content to theirs. Can you add more value that your competitor?

Check and Edit Every Page

Be diligent about editing. Check for spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, factual inaccuracies and typing mistakes. It’s sometimes easier to have another person cast a critical eye over your work before you publish, but at the very least always run spell check. We always check our posts before they go out and even so errors can still slip through the cracks. Don’t beat yourself up about mistakes, just correct them and move on!

Create Authorship

Include a brief Author biography at the foot of every page. This helps with reader recognition as they’ll come to recognise you and know to search for you and your work. It also shows off your credibility and expertise in your specialist subject. You can also link content you publish on a certain domain (for example your blog) to your Google+ page, which will again help you with your search engine optimisation campaign.

Always be Original

Make sure every piece of content you publish is unique to you. Although you can by all means publish other peoples work every so often (with their permission of course!) the search engines love new, unique content more than anything else. If you’re stuck for ideas of what to publish take a look at these 25 blog ideas for professional services firms as inspiration!

Become a Recognised Authority

If you are seen as an expert in your field then you will be searched for more often, your work will be found more easily and you’ll reap the benefits. One of the best ways to be seen as an expert is by publishing lots of top quality content. Try posting your work on industry sites, writing a guest post for someone else, giving opinion pieces that you can link back to or issuing press releases if you have something newsworthy to say. We often post on sites such as Social Media Today and Business 2 Community amongst others.

Be Self Critical

By this I don’t just mean with regard to the editing process. I mean take a long hard look at your work before you publish it and ask yourself if it is something that you would be happy to share, bookmark, recommend to others and to have your name on it? If you hadn’t created this piece, would you be happy to share it? If not why not? You have to be able to see your work through others’ eyes, and if you aren’t happy then make the necessary changes before you ask other people to share it.

Avoid Repetition

In any industry there is a finite amount of material to write about. We find that certain topics on our blog are far more popular than others. Likewise, there are certain subjects that are easier to write about than others and some subjects that I struggle to write at all. Combine this with trying to produce new material every day and you soon find that your subjects will start to overlap. Overlapping subjects is fine, as long as you’re following the advice above and adding value with every new piece. Try also setting a limit on only writing about a certain subject once a fortnight or once a month so your readers aren’t constantly getting the exact same information.

Rosalind Henshell is the co-founder of internet company Big Thinking Online that provide SEO consulting, web optimisation strategies and reputation marketing services that help business leverage the internet to find and retain key clients.
Roz, is an Evertonian, likes vampire novels, holidays and tea!!!